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Epigraphs: The Darkness That Comes Before
Opening Quote''' ''' I shall never tire of underlining a concise little fact which these superstitious people are loath to admit—namely, that a thought comes when “it” wants, not when “I” want . . . —FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL Prologue A – The Wastes of Kûniüri If it is only after that we understand what has come before, then we understand nothing. Thus we shall define the soul as follows: that which precedes everything. —AJENCIS, THE THIRD ANALYTIC OF MEN Prologue B – The Wastes of Kûniüri Nonmen, Sranc, and Men: The first forgets, The third regrets, And the second has all of the fun. —ANCIENT KÛNIÜRI NURSERY RHYME This is a history of a great and tragic holy war, of the mighty factions that sought to possess and pervert it, and of a son searching for his father. And as with all histories, it is we, the survivors, who will write its conclusion. —DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR Chapter One – Carythusal There are three, and only three, kinds of men in the world: cynics, fanatics, and Mandate Schoolmen. —ONTILLAS, ON THE FOLLY OF MEN The author has often observed that in the genesis of great events, men generally possess no inkling of what their actions portend. This problem is not, as one might suppose, a result of men’s blindness to the consequences of their actions. Rather it is a result of the mad way the dreadful turns on the trivial when the ends of one man cross the ends of another. The Schoolmen of the Scarlet Spires have an old saying: “When one man chases a hare, he finds a hare. But when many men chase a hare, they find a dragon.” In the prosecution of competing human interests, the result is always unknown, and all too often, terrifying. —DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR Chapter Two – Atyersus I write to inform you that during my most recent audience, the Nansur Emperor, quite without provocation, publicly addressed me as “fool.” You are, no doubt, unmoved by this. It has become a common occurrence. The Consult eludes us now more than ever. We hear them only in the secrets of others. We glimpse them only through the eyes of those who deny their very existence. Why should we not be called fools? The deeper the Consult secretes itself among the Great Factions, the madder our rantings sound to their ears. We are, as the damned Nansur would say, “a hunter in the thicket”—one who, by the very act of hunting, extinguishes all hope of running down his prey. —ANONYMOUS MANDATE SCHOOLMAN, LETTER TO ATYERSUS Chapter Three – Sumna If the world is a game whose rules are written by the God, and sorcerers are those who cheat and cheat, then who has written the rules of sorcery? —ZARATHINIUS, A DEFENCE OF THE ARCANE ARTS Chapter Four – Sumna To be ignorant and to be deceived are two different things. To be ignorant is to be a slave to the world. To be deceived is to be the slave of another man. The question will always be: Why, when all men are ignorant, and therefore already slaves, does this latter slavery sting us so? —AJENCIS, THE EPISTEMOLOGIES But despite stories of Fanim atrocities, the fact of the matter is that the Kianene, heathen or no, were surprisingly tolerant of Inrithi pilgrimages to Shimeh—before the Holy War, that is. Why would a people devoted to the destruction of the Tusk extend this courtesy to “idolaters”? Perhaps they were partially motivated by the prospect of trade, as others have suggested. But the fundamental motive lies in their desert heritage. The Kianene word for a holy place is si’ihkhalis, which means, literally, “great oasis.” On the open desert it is their strict custom to never begrudge travelers water, even if they be enemies. —DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR Chapter Five – Momemn The difference between the strong emperor and the weak is simply this: the former makes the world his arena, while the latter makes it his harem. —CASIDAS, THE ANNALS OF CENEI What the Men of the Tusk never understood was that the Nansur and the Kianene were old enemies. When two civilized peoples find themselves at war for centuries, any number of common interests will arise in the midst of their greater antagonism. Ancestral foes share many things: mutual respect, a common history, triumph in stalemate, and a plethora of unspoken truces. The Men of the Tusk were interlopers, an impertinent flood that threatened to wash away the observed channels of a far older enmity. —DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR Chapter Six – The Jiünati Steppe It is said: a man is born of his mother and is fed of his mother. Then he is fed of the land, and the land passes through him, taking and giving a pinch of dust each time, until man is no longer of his mother, but of the land. —SCYLVENDI PROVERB . . . and in Old Sheyic, the language of the ruling and religious castes of the Nansurium, skilvenas means “catastrophe” or “apocalypse,” as though the Scylvendi have somehow transcended the role of peoples in history and become a principle. —DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR Chapter Seven – Momemn The world is a circle that possesses as many centres as it does men. —AJENCIS, THE THIRD ANALYTIC OF MEN Chapter Eight – Momemn Kings never lie. They demand the world be mistaken. —CONRIYAN PROVERB When we truly apprehend the Gods, the Nilnameshi sages say, we recognize them not as kings but as thieves. This is among the wisest of blasphemies, for we always see the king who cheats us, never the thief. —OLEKAROS, AVOWALS Chapter Nine – Sumna And the Nonman King cried words that sting: “Now to me you must confess, For death above you hovers!” And the Emissary answered ever wary: “We are the race of flesh, We are the race of lovers.” —“BALLAD OF THE INCHOROI,” ANCIENT KÛNIÜRI FOLK SONG Chapter Ten – Sumna How should one describe the terrible majesty of the Holy War? Even then, still unblooded, it was both frightening and wondrous to behold, a great beast whose limbs were composed of entire nations—Galeoth, Thunyerus, Ce Tydonn, Conriya, High Ainon, and the Nansurium—and with the Scarlet Spires as the dragon’s maw, no less. Not since the days of the Ceneian Empire or the Ancient North has the world witnessed such an assembly. Even diseased by politics, it was a thing of awe. —DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR Chapter Eleven – Momemn Reason, Ajencis writes, is the capacity to overcome unprecedented obstacles in the gratification of desire. What distinguished man from beasts is man’s capacity to overcome infinite obstacles through reason. But Ajencis has confused the accidental for the essential. Prior to the capacity to overcome infinite obstacles is the capacity to confront them. What defines man is not that he reasons, but that he prays. —EKYANNUS I, 44 EPISTLES Chapter Twelve – The Jiünati Steppe I have explained how Maithanet yoked the vast resources of the Thousand Temples to ensure the viability of the Holy War. I have described, in outline, the first steps taken by the Emperor to bind the Holy War to his imperial ambitions. I have attempted to reconstruct the initial reaction of the Cishaurim in Shimeh from their correspondence with the Padirajah in Nenciphon. And I have even mentioned the hated Consult, of whom I can at long last speak without fear of ridicule. I have spoken, in other words, almost exclusively of powerful factions and their impersonal ends. What of vengeance? What of hope? Against the frame of competing nations and warring faiths, how did these small passions come to rule the Holy War? —DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR . . . though he consorts with man, woman and child, though he lays with beasts and makes a mockery of his seed, never shall he be as licentious as the philosopher, who lays with all things imaginable. —INRI SEJENUS, SCHOLARS, 36, 21, THE TRACTATE Chapter Thirteen – The Hethanta Mountains Even the hard-hearted avoid the heat of desperate men. For the bonfires of the weak crack the most stone. —CONRIYAN PROVERB So who were the heroes and the cravens of the Holy War? There are already songs enough to answer that question. Needless to say, the Holy War provided further violent proof of Ajencis’s old proverb, “Though all men be equally frail before the world, the differences between them are terrifying.” —DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR Chapter Fourteen – The Kyranae Plain Some say men continually war against circumstances, but I say they perpetually flee. What are the works of men if not a momentary respite, a hiding place soon to be discovered by catastrophe? Life is endless flight before the hunter we call the world. —EKYANNUS VIII, 111 APHORISMS Chapter Fifteen – Momemn Many have condemned those who joined the Holy War for mercenary reasons, and doubtless, should this humble history find its way into their idle libraries, they will blast me as well. Admittedly, my reasons for joining the Holy War were “mercenary,” if by that one means I joined it in order to procure ends outside of the destruction of the heathen and the reconquest of Shimeh. But there were a great many mercenaries such as myself, and like myself, they inadvertently furthered the Holy War by killing their fair share of heathen. The failure of the Holy War had nothing to do with us. Did I say failure? Perhaps “transformation” would be a better word. —DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR Faith is the truth of passion. Since no passion is more true than another, faith is the truth of nothing. —AJENCIS, THE FOURTH ANALYTIC OF MAN Chapter Sixteen – Momemn Those of us who survived will always be bewildered when we recall his arrival. And not just because he was so different then. In a strange sense he never changed. We changed. If he seems so different to us now, it is because he was the figure that transformed the ground. —DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR Chapter Seventeen – The Andiamine Heights The event itself was unprecedented: not since the fall of Cenei to the Scylvendi hordes had so many potentates gathered in one place. But few knew Mankind itself lay upon the balance. And who could guess that a brief exchange of glances, not the Shriah’s edict, would tip the balance? But is this not the very enigma of history? When one peers deep enough, one always finds that catastrophe and triumph, the proper objects of the historian’s scrutiny, inevitably turn upon the small, the trivial, the nightmarishly accidental. When I reflect overmuch on this fact, I do not fear that we are “drunks at the sacred dance,” as Protathis writes, but that there is no dance at all. —DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR Chapter Eighteen – The Andiamine Heights . . . and that revelation murdered all that I once did know. Where once I asked of the God, “Who are you?” now I ask, “Who am I?” —ANKHARLUS, LETTER TO THE WHITE TEMPLE The Emperor, the consensus seems to be, was an excessively suspicious man. Fear has many forms, but it is never so dangerous as when it is combined with power and perpetual uncertainty. —DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR Chapter Nineteen – Momemn . . . even though the skin-spies were exposed relatively early in the course of the Holy War, most believed the Cishaurim rather than the Consult to be responsible. This is the problem of all great revelations: their significance so often exceeds the frame of our comprehension. We understand only after, always after. Not simply when it is too late, but precisely because it is too late. —DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR Category:The Darkness That Comes Before